From: wex@pws.ma30.bull.com (Member, Redheads Anonymous)
Subject: APP: Re: Architecture
Date: 4 Feb 92 16:32:37 GMT
Organization: Bull Worldwide Information Systems Inc.



In article <1992Feb4.072610.18263@milton.u.washington.edu> HEETER@msu.edu 
(Carrie.Heeter) writes:

   I received a call from an architect today whose company has been
   commissioned to built a data center.  They break ground in approximately
   4 months.  One criteria for the design is that he is supposed to create a
   "VR-Ready" building which will be able to accomodate virtual reality in
   the future.  Anyone have any advice?

At first I thought this was kind of a silly request, but then I thought
about it some more and a few things come to mind.

1) You will need *large* offices.  I look around me at the offices in most
buildings and I see they're too small to use when filled with office
furniture and chairs and books and computers and whatnot.  Add to that the
potential need to move your head/arm/body around in a space and you need
more square feet than most offices today have.

2) And make them real offices with real closable doors.  People are going to
be speaking into microphones and otherwise trying to get their computers to
understand voices.  The less ambient noise there is, the easier it will be.

3) Then there's the cabling problem.  Most VR rigs today (and probably for
the forseeable future) have a zillion cables running everywhere.  The
ability to string large cable bundles easily from office to office will be a
real win.

4) The building itself should be as non-metallic as possible. Stone, brick,
and wood.  There's going to be a hell of a lot of RF running around and if
you want to set up some kind of packet cellular or other broadcasting
devices it's much easier to deal with a building which doesn't act as an
antenna in one place and a reflector two meters over.

5) Avoid standard office fluorescents.  Use incandescents or the new
full-spectrum fluorescents for lighting.  It's much easier on the eyes (and
you're going to have a lot of people with tired eyes).

6) Plan for easy expansion.  Make it easy to add in new electric circuits, a
new air conditioner, etc.  Computer facilities of all types have a habit of
overrunning their initial configurations quite quickly.


--Alan Wexelblat                        phone: (508)294-6120
Bull Worldwide Information Systems      internet: wex@pws.bull.com
Billerica, MA                                     wexelblat.chi@xerox.com

	      "Dedication is not measured in suffering-units."